PC Drivers & Software

[mdec]

Hi. Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I'm really disappointed that those drivers were not ready by release date. Please show your support here for having RAID support in X470 chipset Linux drivers.

When I first booted the 4.16 kernel, it couldn't even find a driver for the RAID controller on my MSI Gaming Plus board.

What makes a good RAID controller?

• It's fully hardware based with dedicated CPU, NVRAM and RAM, as opposed to current line of products that are just drivers that tax the main CPU to manage the RAID. Granted that this would increase costs for AMD, this is an unlikely option from their POV.
• The drivers for it are included in Linux kernel sources in upstream. It's hard to get there with Linus' harsh criticism, but it's not impossible. Hewlett Packard actually managed to do this with their software RAID controllers in the Smart Array product line. Having this kind of support is better than no or binary-only support.
• Drivers are available for major systems at release. That means, Windows, Linux and maybe even FreeBSD if you care.

So, here are my grievances with the current state of affairs:

• Linux drivers for 9XX chipsets are nowhere to be found on AMD's website, despite MANY motherboard manuals claiming that they are there. Instead, there are depressingly outdated drivers on HP Enterprise's support sites, but they are only binary drivers for RedHat Enterprise Linux 6. This OS is so ancient it's actually running kernel 2.6.32, which every script kiddie on the block knows how to root.
• 9XX chipsets appear to be using a Promise chip, but I couldn't figure out which one. Contacting Promise has fallen on deaf ears.
• Linux drivers for X370 and its sibling chipsets are available in source form, but:
• - they are not licensed under a free software license
• - they are not in kernel upstream
• - the driver works only for kernel 4.4 as far as I'm aware, I had no luck with kernel 4.14
• - spending time to study the proprietary license to find out if the community is allowed to fix this driver is a great deterrent for the community to actually try fixing the drivers
• X470 has no drivers for Linux whatsoever.

Is this going to get any proper support, or is the status quo going to continue with Windows getting 1st class treatment while Linux gets the Jim Crow treatment?

[pokester]

I understand you want an official answer and that is why I am telling you this because I would like to see you get that answer. These forums are NOT AMD EMPLOYEES, occasionally you may get an answer from an AMD employee here. There are only 3 i know of that ever answer anything here and I would say it equals less than 1% of the time. The only official way I know of to talk to AMD is to open a support ticket. So take the well written statement you made and apply it to this link to open a ticket: Email Form

I would also add the with Linux the best support typically comes from the support for the each distro itself and those guys typically have the connections with AMD.

[ramchyld]

I believe the 990FX RAID support is handled by DM-RAID. Quite fiddly to set up tho, but I've done it, although only in Ubuntu. Basically, you need to make sure the raid modules and dm-raid are present in your ramdisk image, and if you intend to use UEFI, make sure kpartx is also installed and available in the ramdisk. Make sure your initialization script runs dm-raid starts first, then kpartx.

Next, your array will show up in /dev/mapper as a device with some weird names instead of as a SCSI or IDE device. in /dev. For example, perhaps as /dev/mapper/promise_DEADBEEF. You can need to point your disk partitioning tool of choice at that and use it like any other SCSI or IDE storage. Partitions will show up at the end of the file as usual, for example if the device is promise_DEADBEEF, first partition will be promise_DEADBEEFA, second will be PROMISE_DEADBEEFB, and so on. You will be able to format and mount those as usual.

In short, you need to retrain yourself to work with /dev/mapper instead of /dev. Also, know that some tools are hardwired to work with /dev/sdx and /dev/hdx (ie Clonezilla) and using them can be an exercise in frustration.

Good luck!

[miesiu]

I am also looking for working driver for Linux / Debian.

I want to install system on 2 pcs SSD RAID-1 and boot & work system from this RAID-1.

But I even cannot install - none installator even can see RAID-1 created on the X470.

[mdec]

@miesiu you should use software RAID. Unless you have a hardware RAID

controller (which is actually a software RAID in a SoC package, complete

with its own CPU and RAM), you shouldn't rely on fakeRAID. One day you'll

get a new motherboard with a new fakeRAID schema and your data will be

trapped.

pon., 4 maj 2020, 07:56 użytkownik miesiu <amd-external@jiveon.com> napisał:

Community <https://community.amd.com/?et=watches.email.thread>

Re: Linux 4.16 x470 raid in Drivers & Software

[ramchyld]

https://github.com/thopiekar/rcraid-dkms 

This should provide you with a working fakeraid driver for Linux. A word of advice- there are some minor quirks regarding power saving (read: power saving is not supported, your mechanical disks will be spinning full speed at all times, although that is good for performance). Also setting up is quite tricky (you need to blacklist the kernel AHCI driver. It’s all or nothing. Also make sure the initrd image has a copy of the driver installed). I have this running on a B450 motherboard with 4 disks and it works great.